We get asked whether it's worth visiting a university before applying more often than you'd expect, usually from candidates weighing the cost of a trip against how much it would actually help their decision.
A visit is worth it once your list is down to a small handful of genuine finalists, not as a research tool for a dozen options you haven't narrowed yet. Research your full list first, then consider a trip, an open day, or a virtual alternative for whichever universities actually make your final cut.
What a visit actually adds
Photos and rankings don't tell you what a city actually feels like to live in, how far the medical faculty is from realistic housing, or what the day-to-day campus atmosphere is like. For candidates torn between a small handful of finalists, an in-person sense of the place can genuinely shift a decision that pure research couldn't settle - and rankings alone only tell part of that story anyway.
When it's probably not worth it
If your list is still long and unranked, spending significant money and time visiting every option on it isn't a good use of resources this early. Narrow the list first through research, then consider a visit for your genuine top contenders, not as a blanket research method for a dozen universities.
Open days versus independent visits
Official open days give you structured access, faculty talks, campus tours, sometimes current student Q&As, and they're worth checking each university's own page for. An independent visit outside an open day gives you a more honest, less curated sense of daily life, but with less structured access to information.
If an in-person visit genuinely isn't feasible
Virtual tours, current-student content on social media, and direct outreach to students already at a university can fill some of the gap, though it's a genuinely different kind of information than being there yourself. Don't treat it as equivalent, but it's a reasonable substitute when travel isn't realistic. We've written a more detailed version of this specific case: what to do when you can't visit an Italian university before applying.
Still narrowing down which universities are actually worth researching further? The Lounge is a free IMAT score predictor - answer a few questions and see exactly where you'd realistically land, and which universities that score would clear.
Try the free Score PredictorA visit isn't required to make a good decision, but for a genuinely close call between finalists, it can be worth more than another week of reading rankings.
